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Gov't Accountability Office Says FBI Should Probably Just Give Up The Use Of Force Reporting It Never Bothered Doing

from the waste-not,-left-still-wanting dept

In 1994, Congress passed a law (the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act) that ordered the Department of Justice to “acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” and publish an annual report. The DOJ immediately handed this responsibility off to the International Association for Chiefs of Police, which produced a single report in 2001 and has done nothing since.

The problem was the process was entirely voluntary. And it doesn’t appear that, outside an act of Congress, it can be changed. The DOJ does not directly oversee any state or local law enforcement agencies. The involvement of the IACP might have encouraged more participation if the IACP was interested in participating in this data gathering, but the facts speak for themselves. There’s nothing in this for law enforcement. And since no one can force law enforcement to send the DOJ use-of-force data, participation by the nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies (as of 2015) was as low as 3%.

In 2015, as excessive force deployment and killings by police officers repeatedly gained national attention, the FBI declared itself the hero and rode to the rescue, promising a new, better, still-entirely-voluntary use-of-force database. This time it offered a carrot — federal funds — in exchange for information. It did better than the previous (lack of) effort, managing to gather data from nearly than a third of US law enforcement agencies.

Better than nothing, I suppose. But that’s the thing: it’s still nothing. The FBI has gathered this hugely imperfect data set from a smallish group of self-reporters. And it has done nothing with the data. The annual reporting has never materialized. Thanks to this wealth of inactivity, the FBI and DOJ may soon be able to give up this responsibility — one they clearly never wanted. It won’t be because it can’t be made to work. It will be because no one wants to put in the work. And it may also be because the Government Accountability Office is suggesting the DOJ stop spending tax dollars on work it clearly isn’t doing.

[D]ue to insufficient participation by law enforcement agencies, the FBI has not met thresholds set by the Office of Management and Budget for publishing use of force data or continuing the effort past December 2022. Further, as of February 2021, the FBI had not assessed alternative data collection strategies.

That’s from the summary of the GAO report. The full report [PDF] goes into more detail, but the conclusion is still foregone: the DOJ never wanted to do this and has spent most of three decades not doing it. The failures found by the GAO aren’t the result of the DOJ and FBI struggling mightily and still coming up short. It’s a mandate the DOJ received in 1994 and immediately abandoned. The 2015 effort was mostly PR — an attempt to show the federal government cared enough about police violence to at least try to tally it up. And the FBI put in all the effort that empty promise required.

Here’s the half-assery the GAO observed. Both the BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics) and the FBI were supposed to collect and publish data. Here’s what the BJS managed to do with its time, energy, and personnel over the past half-decade:

[O]ver the 5-year period from fiscal year 2016 through fiscal year 2020, BJS published results from this survey twice. Further, one of those publications was a retrospective report of previously published data that were collected from 2002 through 2011.

Confronted with this failure, the BJS asked the GAO if it had tried looking somewhere else for the data the BJS was supposed to be publishing. The GAO looked and said that’s not even the same thing.

BJS officials also stated that the Law Enforcement Management and Statistics Survey was another means through which DOJ published required data on excessive force. However, BJS publishes information on policies and procedures related to officers’ use of force collected through this survey, but does not publish any information specifically on excessive force by law enforcement officers.

A total lack of effort by everyone involved. The DOJ said the FBI collected the information (but did not publish it) and claimed that ended the DOJ’s involvement — a strange assertion for an agency directly overseeing the FBI to say. Stranger still, the FBI said it had not been informed this was its job, despite making two public announcements (2015 and 2019) saying it would be doing these things.

To ensure Americans were deprived of any useful info about excessive force deployment, the FBI deliberately made a mess of the data given to it by a small percentage of law enforcement agencies.

According to FBI documentation, the National Use-of-Force Data Collection does not differentiate between incidents involving reasonable force and incidents involving excessive force. Specifically, the collection does not contain information on whether officers followed their department’s policy or acted lawfully in any given incident. Therefore, it is unclear how DOJ could use these data to publish a summary on excessive force by law enforcement officers.

And again, another failure to do the things asked of it by the FBI.

In addition, the FBI began collecting these data in 2019 and has not yet published any use of force incident data collected through the program…

As was noted above, the FBI and DOJ have no backup plan. If their original effort didn’t work, the solution appears to be to let it die. The GAO says no alternative efforts have been considered to ensure greater collection or more frequent publication. (Or, indeed, ANY publication of collected data.) The proposals the GAO heard from these entities suggest officials were just making stuff up on the spot.

When you’re concerned about which agencies might be engaging in more deadly/excessive force than others (as was partially the point of this database), a random sample and some extrapolation is going to provide cover for agencies with endemic problems and paint an unrealistic picture about law enforcement force deployment.

The FBI’s business plan for the collection states that using a sample of agencies may be a potential alternative data collection mechanism.

At this point, the FBI only has a “sample of agencies.” The collection has never approached 100% of the nation’s law enforcement agencies. At best, it has managed to collect police killing data from 55% of these agencies. When it comes to force deployment, the percentage is much lower.

Just to drive home the point once more: no one in the DOJ wanted to do this job. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has published 130 reports from 2016 to 2020. Total number of use-of-force reports during that same time period? One.

The good news for those people who spent years not doing what they were paid to do? They won’t have to not do it much longer.

[T]he collection itself may be discontinued as soon as the end of 2022.

That’s the way the FBI wants it. No news is good news. Or, at the very least, its news that can’t be disputed by data it barely collected and never published. All that’s left is the public perception of law enforcement force deployment — something that definitely hasn’t improved over the past five years. The nation’s law enforcement agencies — including those at the federal level — have managed to rack up nearly thirty years of non-participation trophies. Never investigating the problem means never having to confront the problem. And if you screw around long enough, people will stop asking you to do stuff you don’t want to do.

Filed Under: fbi, gao, police brutality, police shootings, use of force

ATF Goes On Tour To Teach Journalists That Cops Are Usually Right When They Kill Someone

from the view-from-the-cop-shop-journalism dept

The ATF (the accepted not-actually-an-acronym for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) is back on its periodic charm offensive. This time the charm seems a bit more forced, as citizens and governments all over the nation are aggressively questioning force use by law enforcement officers.

The murder of George Floyd by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin prompted nationwide protests targeting police violence. In apparent response to this public reckoning, the ATF has been inviting members of the press to try out its VR shoot-a-thon in hopes of convincing them (and the public reading these reports) that most killings are justified.

This tradition appears to date back to late spring of this year. It’s a calculated play for deference from journalists. By showing them how difficult it can be to make split-second decisions in potentially deadly situations, the ATF is hoping to head off questioning of officers’ actions during shootings by police officers. This, of course, glosses over the part where officers are supposed to be better at this sort of thing than non-cops — you know, the “training and expertise” they cite so often when seeking warrants or defending against allegations of rights violations.

Here’s one use-of-force seminar the ATF threw for Arizona journalists in May of this year. At least at this one, reporters tried to get something other than standard copaganda out of the trainers.

[A]t Wednesday’s training agents didn’t want to go into why, on a national level, African Americans and Latinos are more likely to be shot to death by police.

“I think there’s a lot that goes into that,” [ATF Special Operations Division Deputy Chief Paul] Massock said. “I would tell you that the number one issue that goes into decision-making on the part of an officer is the behavior of the individual that they’re dealing with. Period.”

Well, that’s simply not true. If it were, people wouldn’t be asking these questions. The difference in police response to minorities is not only noticeable, it’s undeniable.

Here’s another one, held in Pittsburgh in June. The tail end of the article catches the ATF somewhat tipping its hand.

Increasing the understanding of those situations and the laws surrounding them was the intention of going to the media with this presentation, Mr. Massock said.

“We would like to have — if not an agreement — at least an understanding of each other,” he said.

And by “understanding,” the ATF means “less questioning.”

The same presentation was held in Boston in August, presented under the-view-from-the-blue-line headline “How Law Enforcement Agents Decide to Use Deadly Force.” And another questionable assertion was made by Deputy Chief Massock.

Ideally, an interaction never has to get violent, for everyone’s sake.

“We’re husbands, wives, fathers, mothers in those communities, so we’re already a part of the community and we want to make sure we have that understanding and good relationship while we’re there,” Massock said.

That’s undeniably false. The ATF isn’t a member of any community, strictly speaking. And its efforts tend to focus on minorities, using borderline entrapment to talk poor people into robbing fake stash houses that contain no drugs or money… and then using the quantity of imaginary drugs to trigger mandatory minimum sentences that begin at 20 years of imprisonment. No drugs are taken off the street. No guns are recovered. And no actual drug dealers are brought to justice.

And, extending this line of reasoning to cops, one of the greatest obstacles to community-oriented policing is the fact that most cops live miles away from the neighborhoods they police. This results in them treating the areas they serve as just places they work (at best) or enemy territory they patrol (at worst).

The ATF’s latest presentation — this one given in El Paso, Texas — has received the most press. El Paso journalists were invited to participate but the Border Report’s coverage of the event is the one that has been spread across the nation in its original, uncritical form. That’s possibly because local coverage from El Paso news outlets was so bland as to be entirely forgettable.

The Border Report’s headline also traveled around the nation unaltered: “Trainers show media the ‘other side’ of deadly shootings and use of force by police.”

And, again, trainers made statements that are facially ridiculous but go unchallenged.

The ATF training includes dash-cam videos of officers who got shot because they did not perceive a person as threatening or relied on voice commands to get someone to drop a gun. “People talk about de-escalation, but de-escalation takes two persons to work. How many times does the officer have to shout, ‘drop the gun!’” Massock said.

Ah, yes. It’s the person without the training and expertise who’s supposed to know exactly how to react when cops are shouting at them. And I’m not sure if just yelling the same thing over and over again is really “de-escalation.” It sounds more like cops trying the only thing they really know how to do, since de-escalation has never been a priority for law enforcement agencies.

Also, when it’s a judgment call following police violence, it should be assumed it’s the officers that are in the right.

When officers appear to be predisposed to use force against someone it’s often because the 9-1-1 operator or police dispatch gave him information that puts him on his toes. “The officer has all the facts. Citizens often only see the end result. The officer has knowledge and experience that the general public does not,” Massock said.

Trainers and experts talking about training and expertise, and yet completely unwilling to apply either to difficult questions. After ducking a question about the recent beating of an unarmed homeless man by El Paso PD officers (“we’re not familiar with the case”), the trainer went on to enlighten reporters with some curricular logic.

Massock said an officer or a criminal may fire five to six shots per second in the heat of battle, which answers the question, “why did the cop have to shoot him so many times?”

Why did the cop have to shoot so many times? Because the cop shot so many times. Investigation closed. It’s Confirmation Bias On Tour! Journalists are invited to attend, immerse themselves in a single narrative, and expect to be ignored if they ask any tough questions. This isn’t education. It’s PR work being performed for the benefit of violent cops everywhere, all funded by citizens’ tax dollars.

Filed Under: atf, journalists, police shootings

Austin Homeowners Association Pitches In To Help Cops Kill A Guy Over Uncut Grass

from the all-american-dystopia dept

This is one of the most horrendous — and one of the most American stories — I have ever read. It encompasses a lot of distinctly American issues, ranging from law enforcement violence to the disturbing ability of private individuals and entities to reliably summon law enforcement and bring about the destruction of others.

It starts, as so many stories about police violence do, with some needlessly exonerative reporting by journalists — in this case by Elisha Fieldstadt of NBC News.

An attempt by Austin, Texas, officials to serve a search warrant and provide lawn care resulted in shots fired, an hourslong standoff, a house fire and a death, police said Wednesday.

You’ll immediately notice two things about this sentence. First, there’s the phrase “provide lawn care” — the sort of service that wouldn’t normally generate local news headlines, much less coverage from a national news network.

The second thing you’ll notice is the phrase “resulted in shots fired,” as if the end result of these actions were the inevitable outcome of “providing lawn care.” This, of course, is an absurd statement. It’s also absurd to write that something resulted in something when it involves police shooting someone because the fact is police shot and killed someone and that’s what should be noted, rather than semi-obscured with phrasing that suggests police were powerless to stop their own violence.

Nothing about this gets any better. The word “warrant” carries the implication that some serious crime was the impetus for this deployment of Austin police officers. But it was only a “nuisance” search warrant, which means the only crime committed was administrative — a violation of homeowner-focused codes that aren’t considered actual criminal offenses.

Here’s how the Austin PD describes this arm of its law enforcement efforts:

The Nuisance Abatement Unit is composed of one Detective and one Sergeant. The Nuisance Abatement Unit works “behind the scenes” with property owners and other city departments in an attempt to first gain voluntary compliance with properties that have been deemed a “nuisance”.

It’s a two-officer office. But this “nuisance” homeowner was confronted by an unknown number of police officers and code enforcement officers. And that’s before things went haywire, resulting in the arrival of the Austin PD SWAT team, mental health officers, and a crisis negotiator.

Who knows what was going on in the resident’s mind? And, I guess, who cares, now that he’s dead? Several hours were spent trying to get the resident out of his house… to mow his lawn? Sometime after the officers left a warrant posted on the door and “code enforcement officers” began mowing the resident’s lawn, the resident decided to start firing his gun from inside his house. At whom, it doesn’t say.

The SWAT team rolled in, along with its presumably less-violent entourage, leading to a standoff that was broken by the resident again firing his gun from inside his house. The cops sent a robot in to deal with the resident and his gun. That’s when officers noticed the house was on fire. This finally prompted the resident to leave his house, which he did through his garage while carrying guns. At that point, SWAT team members shot him.

That leads to another tragicomical bit of view-from-nowhere reporting:

“At that time, a SWAT officer shot and struck the resident who went down with a gunshot wound,” [Austin Police Chief Joseph] Chacon said.

Officers got the man away from the house and treated him before he was taken to a hospital, where he died. It’s unclear what caused his death.

Really? That’s the reporting? Presumably the man left the house without any bullets in him. He went to the hospital with at least one bullet in him. People who have zero bullets in them tend to remain alive. People with bullets in them have a greatly reduced chance of surviving. It seems pretty clear what caused his death. This paragraph shows an alarming amount of deference to the sources for this reporting, all of which appear to be law enforcement officials.

The final insult to the dead man are the last two sentences of the article, one of which features Austin PD spokesman Jose Mendez.

Their main goal Wednesday was to get the man in compliance with the local homeowners association.

“They attempted to cut the lawn for him, and this is the reaction they got,” Mendez said.

In other words, the HOA got him killed. A complaint about the length of grass resulted in shots fired, a standoff, and a dead Austin resident. And it’s all capped off with the police spokesperson blaming the dead man for the chain of events that ended in him being killed by officers.

There’s the cautionary aspect of this incident: anything code or law on the books will, at some point, need to be enforced. And that’s how people end up being killed over lawn care, with an assist by entities that wish they could be as powerful as the people they rely on for enforcement: homeowners associations.

Filed Under: austin, grass, hoa, homeowner's association, lawn care, police, police shootings, texas

Kansas City PD Presentation Says Every Shooting Investigation Is Handled The Same Way… Unless It Involves A Cop

from the no-bias-here-if-you-don't-count-the-bias-towards-cops dept

The Kansas City Police Department has managed to turn a few heads — and not in the good way — with an internal PowerPoint that may as well have been titled “So, You’ve Killed Someone.” The document was obtained during discovery in a wrongful death suit against the KCPD. Back in 2019, Officer Dylan Pifer shot and killed Terrance Bridges, claiming he thought Bridges was trying to pull a gun from his sweatshirt pocket. No gun was found on Bridges.

The presentation [PDF] obtained from Bridges’ family’s lawyer by the Kansas City Star advises cops of two things: police shootings should be handled like routine criminal investigations to eliminate claims of bias. And police shootings should be handled nothing like routine criminal investigations because they involve cops.

The opening slide makes it clear what the priority is in investigations of shootings by cops: preserving the narrative. It even has the number one next to it.

Upon completion of this block of instruction, the participants will, with the use of handouts and notes, be able to:

1. Identify the best defense again [sic] claims of bias or favoritism in the investigations of officer involved shootings.

You know what’s not a top priority? Preserving evidence. That comes behind officer safety.

Supervisors should consider the preservation of evidence as secondary to the safety of the public and department personnel.

The presentation points out that shootings are controversial and claims “police critics” will often claim investigations — which routinely clear officers of wrongdoing — are “biased and that police receive special treatment.” So, the best defense is a good offense:

The best defense to these claims is CONSISTENCY in how we conduct ALL criminal investigations.

[…]

The best way to do this is to treat the investigation into officer involved shootings LIKE EVERY OTHER CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION.

All well and good, except the presentation spends most of its running time explaining how this sort of investigation won’t be treated like a regular criminal investigation.

Does this look like the sort of thing cops offer to non-cops involved in shootings?

Don’t engage the member in detailed conversation about the incident, but you are encouraged to talk with them like you would on any other day.

Make sure that all requests (bathroom, food, drinks, cigarettes) by the involved members are met as soon as possible.

Forget about preserving evidence:

If their recording system is active, have the member mute the mike and mute yours. They will be making calls to FOP [Fraternal Order of Police] and spouses and family. They may be in an excited state and hyperverbal.

And start hiding stuff from journalists:

Park somewhere that responding media will not be able to film the involved member.

But that of course only means the involved cop. The non-cop will have any and all possibly incriminating information immediately forwarded to local media, along with any mugshots the PD happens to have on hand. Information about the involved officer will be much slower in arriving. Much slower than even the involved officer’s statement to investigators:

Generally, the member will be permitted up to forty-eight (48) hours to complete such statement…

The presentation then spends a bit of time bemoaning the public’s confidence in law enforcement, which isn’t at an all-time high. It blames the media (again) for misrepresenting shootings by officers and, again, stresses doing everything by the book to combat this perception. But the book for officers is very different from the book for citizens. And until law enforcement agencies are willing to change that, the rest of what bothers the presenter about public perception isn’t going to change.

And this is about the worst possible way you could end an instructive presentation on handling shootings by officers:

There is nothing wrong with being glad to be alive and being okay that you were the winner in a competition in which the winning prize was your life.

Law enforcement isn’t a competition with winners and losers. It’s a job, an important one, but one that has apparently been handed to people who believe members of the public are enemy combatants and that shootings are just games to be won.

Filed Under: investigations, kansas city, police, police shootings

Cops: People In Their Own Homes Are In The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time Whenever A Cop Enters Unlawfully

from the dear-sirs-or-madams:-get-fucked dept

It’s not a trend. It’s disturbing, trend or no trend. It just is. You’re the enemy, even when you’re in your own home. That’s the arguments cops are making for killing or maiming people who had no idea law enforcement officers had entered their residence.

Part of the problem is “no-knock” raids. Saying they need the element of surprise to ensure officer safety and prevent the destruction of evidence, cops are engaging in a hyper-aggressive form of warrant service that sacrifices officer safety on the altar of evidence preservation. There’s no evidence no-knock raids are safer. In fact, many high-profile stories show the opposite: performing an armed home invasion can often result in an armed response. The residents don’t know cops are entering their house violently. All they know is people with guns are suddenly in their home shouting threats. They respond appropriately.

This is a direct result of the militarization of police, aided greatly by the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which encourages cops to partake of the military’s surplus. The addition of military gear, tech, and vehicles has allowed cops to view themselves as combatants in a war zone, with everyone who isn’t a cop a potential enemy.

Even when they don’t have the explicit permission to enter a residence without knocking and announcing their presence, cops do it anyway. What are the odds anyone would find out? Whose testimony is going to stack up against that of sworn officers of the law?

“Wrong place, wrong time” is living in your own house when cops show up unexpectedly. And that’s almost always how cops show up: unexpectedly. In Julian Betton’s case, cops served a warrant by crashing through his front door unannounced and shooting at him 29 times (hitting him nine times) when he confronted the home invasion with a gun in his hands. The gun was at his side but it made no difference to officers who kept firing until they felt he no longer “posed a threat.” Betton was paralyzed from the waist down and suffered numerous injuries to his internal organs.

What the task force failed to notice during its “dynamic entry” was Betton’s security camera. The recorded footage flatly contradicted multiple officers’ sworn testimony. They claimed they knocked and announced their presence before entering. The tape shows no knock, no hesitation, and not a single officer moving their lips to announce their presence. A total of nine seconds elapse between the officers’ arrival and their entry into Betton’s home.

Betton sued and won, but Officer David Belue of the Myrtle Beach PD appealed the stripping of his immunity, arguing that he had every right to shoot Betton, even if the officers’ entry was illegal.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals seems skeptical, to say the least. Belue’s lawyer argued that the illegal entry was not an issue for this appeal, so the court didn’t need to waste its time relitigating that aspect of the case. The Court disagreed, pointing out Betton likely had every reason to protect himself from armed intruders that did not identify themselves as cops and were wearing gear that made it much more difficult for Betton to clearly identify them as officers of the law.

To paraphrase the oral arguments concisely, this is what was said:

OFFICER BELUE’S LAWYER: Citizens have no right to defend themselves from armed intruders in their home.

COURT: What the actual fuck

The oral arguments should be listened to in their entirety to enjoy the thorough reaming of Belue’s representation, who attempted to argue the particulars of the shooting do not matter. According to Officer Belue’s lawyer, the only thing that matters is a cop’s view of the situation. If a cop increases the chances of an armed response by performing an illegal entry, it’s on the resident if they get shot at 29 times by officers for choosing to grab a weapon before confronting the intruders.

This argument upends the Castle Doctrine. The Fourth Amendment holds the home above all else when it comes to Fourth Amendment protections. Citizens are given wide latitude to defend their home from invaders — and that includes those who might be carrying badges. Officers like Belue are arguing that law enforcement’s invasion of a home tips the scale in favor of law enforcement, allowing them to do whatever they want without repercussion simply because of their profession.

This is wrong. But it’s not the only time this perverse argument has been made.

On September 6, 2018, Dallas police officer Amber Guyger entered the wrong apartment and killed Botham Jean, the actual resident of the apartment Guyger thought was hers. Guyger may have made an honest mistake but it ended in the death of a person who responded like anyone would to an unexpected intruder: he got up off his couch and moved towards the front door. Guyger handled her own illegal entry by killing Jean within a few seconds of entering his apartment.

She claimed Jean ignored orders to show his hands. (This is disputed by neighbors’ account of the shooting.) But why would he? He was in his own apartment and Guyger was the intruder. The threat was posed by Guyger. She walked into the wrong apartment and drew her gun when she spotted someone she didn’t expect to be there. Jean responded to Guyger by trying to get her out of his apartment. For that completely explicable reaction, he was killed.

So, who has the right to defend themselves in a situation like this? Well, a witness for Officer Guyger claimed it’s the person who entered the wrong apartment.

A Texas judge barred explosive testimony Wednesday by a lead investigator who said he believes fired Dallas police officer Amber Guyger did not commit a crime when she entered the wrong apartment and killed the unarmed black man inside.

The “lead investigator” was former Texas Ranger David Armstrong. His take on the Botham Jean shooting? Guyger had the right to defend herself against an intruder even as she intruded into someone else’s residence.

On the witness stand, Armstrong disputed prosecutors’ argument that Jean was seated on his couch in front of the TV eating vanilla ice cream when Guyger shot him. Instead, Armstrong said Jean was 13 feet from the door and posed a “deadly threat” to Guyger.

Outside the presence of the jury, Armstrong said Guyger acted “reasonably” and that he does not believe she committed any crime.

Living in your own home turns you into a “deadly threat” the moment an officer enters a residence unannounced. That’s what cops want the legal standard to be.

Fortunately, it isn’t, at least for the most part. There’s a lot of immunity being spread around carelessly (the Fourth’s oral arguments include one judge saying with some irritation “we grant immunity to everyone”) but it’s still police officers who are the interlopers when it comes to situations like these. The Appeals Court doesn’t sound like it will give Belue a pass on his decision to use bullets to handle a situation he made more dangerous by refusing to follow the specifications (knock and announce) of his search warrant. And Amber Guyger was found guilty of murder, albeit the variety that results in a 10-year sentence rather than life.

Make no mistake: law enforcement officers are just as willing as any of us to do whatever it takes to preserve their livelihoods. The problem is that — unlike most of us — they occasionally engage in unjustified killings. And yet, they still want people to believe these deaths are a response to threats posed by citizens minding their own business in their own homes, even when all evidence points to the officers being in the wrong. When we screw up at work, we inconvenience people. When cops screw up at work, people end up dead. The arguments are not just weak, they’re inexcusable. We deserve better. But it seems unlikely we’ll ever get what we deserve.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, castle doctrine, police, police shootings, shootings

FBI Debuts 'First And Only' Police Shooting Database That Is Neither 'First' Nor 'Only'

from the now-with-70-percent-less-data! dept

The FBI — late to the party — proudly announces it’s the first guest to arrive. (via Axios)

The FBI has launched the nation’s first and only database that collects information about police-involved shootings and use-of-force incidents.

Most of this announcement is incorrect. The Washington Post has been collecting data on shootings by cops for a few years now. The Guardian put a couple of years into this project before dropping it. Fatal Encounters has been around since 2012 — the side project of former newspaper editor D. Brian Burghart… one that now requires 10 hours a day to maintain. There’s even a database of dogs killed by police officers, something no one in the government has ever offered to track.

So, the FBI is far from the first. It’s not even the “only.” But it could have been both.

The FBI had a head start. The DOJ’s been charged with collecting this data for more than 15 20 years now. Its efforts on this front have been nonexistent. The DOJ decided the best way to obtain compliance from the nation’s law enforcement agencies was to do nothing at all. Reporting was completely voluntary, putting the FBI well behind private parties unwilling to wait for law enforcement agencies to pass along data on shootings.

After 15 years of nothing, the FBI vowed to redouble its efforts. It overhauled the voluntary reporting system in 2015 and replaced it with a brand new voluntary system. Now, after having done nearly nothing to track shootings and nudge the dial towards accountability, the FBI is announcing it has the “first and only” database of its type.

Even its own truncated (and recorded!) statement makes it clear this won’t be the most or first anything:

Halpern: The repository has the support of law enforcement agencies across the country who voluntarily submit the data.

Halvorsen: It kicked off on January 1, 2019, and as of February 2019, we already have approximately 4,600 law enforcement agencies that are participating in this collection.

4,600. Wow. Oh wait.

According to the DOJ’s 2013 statistics, there are 15,388 law enforcement agencies in the nation. The almighty FBI has managed to secure 30% compliance with its voluntary reporting project. Spectacular.

What this database will have that others won’t is information on use of force incidents that don’t involve an officer killing someone. That data will be useful. But it will also be woefully limited, seeing as it won’t include 70% of the nation’s law enforcement agencies.

While it is much better than the decade-plus of the nothing the FBI traded our tax dollars for, it’s simply not acceptable for the agency to believe 30% compliance is worth announcing publicly. Unfortunately, it will probably take an act of Congress to make this reporting mandatory. Until this happens, the public is being better served by journalists reporting on killings by cops, rather than waiting around for cops to tell on themselves.

Filed Under: database, doj, fbi, police shootings

Atlanta Prosecutor Sues DOJ For Blocking Investigation Of Incident Where Cops Shot A Man 59 Times

from the 92-bullets,-875-days dept

A case that involves some shocking numbers has resulted in a lawsuit against the DOJ. An investigation into a raid that ended with law enforcement officers putting 59 bullets into the body of an Atlanta resident has dead-ended and it appears to be because the DOJ doesn’t want to talk about it.

Jamarion Robinson, a 26-year-old student and football player at Clark Atlanta University, was shot and killed by a team of local and federal officers who broke down the door to his girlfriend’s apartment on Aug. 5, 2016, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Atlanta federal court by the office of Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.

The DA says he has repeatedly attempted to work with the DOJ to obtain the personnel files and training materials of the officers responsible for Robinson’s death, all to no avail.

“It has now been 875 days since the officers killed Mr. Robinson, and the DOJ has yet to provide any of the documents or evidence requested and has failed to provide any investigative reports relating to Mr. Robinson’s death,” the complaint states.

The opening of the DA’s lawsuit [PDF] doesn’t explain what Atlanta prosecutors did for the first 275 days, but it does point out the DOJ has been blocking this investigation for nearly two years at this point.

Having been stymied for more than 600 days from receiving any documents from the Department of Justice related to the shooting of Jamarion Robinson, Plaintiff Office of the Fulton County District Attorney (“Plaintiff” or “the District Attorney”) brings this action against Defendant United States Department of Justice (“Defendant” or “the DOJ”) to compel compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552 (“FOIA”).

This FOIA lawsuit is only part of the federal government’s problems. The family of Jamarion Robinson has also sued the officers involved in the shooting, which includes the US Marshals Service. This lawsuit appears to be on hold at the moment as everyone suing over the shooting attempts to obtain documents related to Robinson’s killing.

The numbers mentioned above — 59 bullet holes, 600 days of DOJ stonewalling — are just part of the picture. There’s also the number of officers involved and the number of bullets expended to take the life of someone law enforcement apparently had little reason to suspect might respond violently.

On August 5, 2016, 14 law enforcement officers from eight separate local municipal police departments, along with at least one United States Marshal, traveled to the Parkside Camp Creek Luxury Apartments in Atlanta, Georgia to execute a State of Georgia arrest warrant for Jamarion Robinson (hereinafter “Mr. Robinson”). The state arrest warrant alleged that Mr. Robinson committed an aggravated assault in violation of Georgia Code Annotated 16-5-21, a state crime. Mr. Robinson was not charged with any federal crime, and there was not a federal arrest warrant pending for Mr. Robinson.

The DA’s lawsuit notes Robinson’s only legal problem up to this point was a traffic violation. It also points out Robinson suffered from schizophrenia, which might explain his uncharacteristic decision to allegedly point a gun at police officers (and three tenants of a nearby apartment) days before he was gunned down in his apartment. Supposedly, Robinson fired a shot (or three shots… depending on which statement you read) at the officers attempting to serve a warrant which apparently justified this response.

[T]he officers knocked down the door to the apartment and immediately commenced firing approximately 51 shots from outside into the apartment without any known provocation and with reckless disregard for the safety of anyone else in the apartment and surrounding apartment units.

The officers then entered the apartment and fired approximately 41 additional shots from weapons, including a 9mm submachine gun, a .40mm submachine gun, and a .40 Glock pistol.

After officers fired more than 90 bullets into Robinson’s apartment, some claimed Robinson fired at them first. But statements made by other officers and the results of the ensuing search punch holes in this narrative.

At the conclusion of the shooting, a firearm was located, which the officers claimed that Mr. Robinson fired at them three times. However, when the firearm was recovered, it was damaged and inoperable. Moreover, in an investigative report completed by Officer Steve Schreckengost, he did not state that the officers entered the premises because Mr. Robinson was shooting. Rather, Officer Schreckengost claims they entered to protect others inside the apartment from Mr. Robinson, although it was clear from their surveillance no one else was in the apartment.

They wanted to “protect” others from Robinson, but no one involved was interested in Robinson’s safety. The team of officers was aware of Robinson’s mental health issues and had spoken to his family prior to the raid. But not a single member of the 14-person, multi-office “task force” did anything that might have resulted in a peaceful arrest, like ask for advice, assistance, or third-party search consent from Robinson’s family or his current roommate.

Six hundred days of DOJ stonewalling roughly aligns with the agency’s reshuffled priorities following Trump’s presidential win. The incoming AG (Jeff Sessions) yanked funding from the DOJ’s civil rights department and said the agency would no longer be investigating the actions of local law enforcement. If there are any documents to be obtained from the DOJ, they’re likely in the process of being massaged into exonerative shape before being released.

Filed Under: atlanta, doj, evidence, jamarion robinson, police shootings

California Town OKs Destruction Of Police Shooting Records Days Before They Could Be Obtained By The Public

from the cops-and-the-people-that-serve-them dept

California has long protected police officers from accountability. Most police misconduct records are impossible to obtain via public records requests. The restrictions covering these personnel files even prevent defense attorneys and prosecutors from accessing them, allowing cops with lousy track records for telling the truth present testimony as if they’ve never committed a misdeed or told a lie.

After years of legislative surrender to police union pressure and an overall deference to all things law enforcement, this year’s model finally managed to get a records reform bill to land on the governor’s desk. The new law goes into effect January 1, 2019, opening up access to a number of records Californians have never seen.

Under SB-1421, law enforcement agencies are required to provide public access to records related to use of force, sexual assault complaints, and dishonesty in investigations and reporting of a crime.

Faced with impending accountability, police departments are readying themselves for mass releases of previously withheld data. Oh, wait. The opposite of that.

Inglewood City Council approved the destruction of records that have been in the police department’s possession — more than 100 cases — longer than required by law. The city staff report and council resolution describing the action makes no mention of the new police transparency law. Instead it says the affected records are “obsolete, occupy valuable space, and are of no further use to the police department.” It added the traditional method of destroying such records is to shred them.

Yes, it’s merely a coincidence that records the Inglewood PD has held onto for years — “longer than required by law” — are being destroyed days before the new transparency law goes into effect. It’s all so innocent and devoid of subterfuge the city council did it in secret with zero public notice or input.

No video or audio of the Dec. 11 council action is available on the city’s website and neither are meeting minutes or any record of the decision.

It affects far more than records the PD has retained for years. The authorization from the Inglewood council will allow the PD to destroy all Internal Affairs investigations from 2004-2012 and all Use of Force reports from 2015-2016.

The mayor continues to argue this is all routine city business and has nothing to do with the mandatory transparency going into effect January 1.

“It’s actually quite routine for us to do records destruction,” [Mayor James T. Butts Jr.] told ABC 7’s Eyewitness News. “The Finance Department, the Police Department and other entities — whenever they want to destroy records that exceed a time limit — they submit a staff report to the City Council and the City Council approves or disapproves the records destruction.”

No doubt this statement is true. But this move, with this timing, does nothing to restore years of shattered trust. The Inglewood PD has stonewalled the public for two years, refusing to release info about the killing of two residents by police officers who encountered them passed out in a parked vehicle. The PD was also investigated by the DOJ, which found officers routinely deployed excessive force and were overseen by department management that often cleared officers of wrongdoing after little or no investigation.

The PD’s decision to destroy records it has held onto for years only days before they may have become publicly-accessible only further adds to the “bunker mentality” perception noted in the DOJ’s investigation. The PD wishes to remain a closed shop despite the new law. This move — and the city’s approval — lets residents know the city isn’t interested in accountability or transparency, no matter what the new law says.

Filed Under: california, inglewood, inglewood city council, inglewood police department, police shootings, public records, record destruction, sb-1421, transparency

Officer Who Killed Unarmed Man Now Teaching Officers How To Go About The Difficult Business Of Being Alive

from the POLICE-STATE-UNIVERSITY dept

If a cop shoots an unarmed citizen, nothing much happens to the cop. Maybe some paid vacation. Maybe a desk stint. Maybe an internal investigation will deliver a “no policy violated” determination months down the road. Maybe a DA will make a disinterested presentation to an uninterested grand jury and shrug about how no charges will be forthcoming. Sometimes cops quit rather than face investigations. Sometimes cops quit rather than get fired. Every so often, a cop does time, but it’s such a rarity it’s viewed as breathtaking turn of events.

What no one really expects from this predictable life cycle is someone upcycling their homicide into an instructional career. That’s what former Tulsa police officer Betty Jo Shelby is doing. Two years ago, Shelby shot an unarmed Terence Crutcher during a traffic stop, rationalizing the shooting by claiming he was exhibiting “zombie-like behavior.” Can’t have zombies without a corpse, so Shelby shot Crutcher, killing him. Another officer on the scene only felt the need to deploy a taser, making Shelby’s stated fear much more subjective than objective. The other three officers did not open fire or deploy their tasers.

Unlike a lot of cops, Shelby was actually tried for first-degree manslaughter. She was acquitted before quitting the Tulsa PD rather than take a desk job. She has since returned to law enforcement as a Sheriff’s deputy in Rogers County (OK) and is apparently focusing some energy on an extremely dubious sideline.

Two years after she fatally shot an unarmed black man in Tulsa, Betty Jo Shelby, now a police officer in an adjacent county, is teaching a course on how to “survive such events” — legally, emotionally and physically. The course, as she explained it to a local ABC affiliate, equips officers to withstand the effect — named for the Missouri city convulsed by the 2014 shooting of a black teenager — “when a police officer is victimized by anti-police groups and tried in the court of public opinion.”

Ah, I see some of the most powerful government employees in the nation will be receiving instruction on how to be better victims. I guess being more alive than the bullet-filled decedent just doesn’t cut it anymore. And let’s not forget the all-powerful “court of public opinion,” which is unable to convict officers for manslaughter (or other criminal charges), much less ensure officers are held accountable for questionable force deployments.

The value of the class is likely equal to its entry fee:

According to a state website, the training, which is certified by the Oklahoma Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training, or CLEET, “will describe some of the challenges in dealing with the aftermath of a critical incident such as Officer Involved Shooting. Participants will be exposed to many of the legal, financial, physical, and emotional challenges which may result from a critical incident.” The free course lasts four hours, including two “Mental Health Hours.”

Some of this information may be useful, but it’s probably best imparted by lawyers, therapists, financial advisors, and other professionals with a bit more distance between them and the killing of an unarmed man. As if the whole thing weren’t tone deaf enough, Deputy Shelby is bringing her class to Tulsa — the city that employed her when she killed Terence Crutcher.

Shelby is being met with protests from locals who aren’t interested in having a killer cop pass on her “wisdom” to her former coworkers. They have a point. Shelby shouldn’t really be instructing other officers in anything, much less doing so in the same city where her training apparently failed her. While it was determined Crutcher was under the influence when he was shot (possibly explaining the “zombie-like” behavior), he was moving away from Shelby at a zombie-like pace only deemed threatening enough for a taser deployment by another officer at the scene.

After an acquittal and new job, Shelby is taking her cross from PD to PD to tell officers how they, too, can go about the difficult job of living after taking that option away from others. That anyone’s willing to host this is an indictment of those agencies. That the one that put her on desk duty post-shooting would do so — knowing it would have this effect on locals and the survivors of Terence Crutcher — is simply appalling.

Filed Under: betty jo shelby, police, police shootings, terence crutcher

FBI Director: We Need More Data On Police Shootings So Law Enforcement Can 'Change The Narrative'

from the it's-not-about-accountability,-it's-about-control dept

FBI Director James Comey didn’t dig into his bag of “Ferguson Effect” rhetorical devices during his comments to a law enforcement conference on Sunday, but he came close. Under that theory, the possibility of being held accountable by citizens and their recording devices has apparently been holding officers back from enforcing laws, making arrests, or otherwise earning their paychecks.

The problem now is a lack of data, Comey claims. Law enforcement has lost control of the narrative, he stated, as if a one-sided portrayal of every police use of excessive/deadly force was somehow beneficial to the nation.

Dramatic videos of deadly law enforcement encounters and the absence of reliable data about how often police use force contribute to a regrettable narrative that “biased police are killing black men at epidemic rates,” FBI Director James Comey said Sunday.

That story line has formed amid a lack of comprehensive, national data about how many citizens are killed or injured at the hands of police officers.

Thanks to the DOJ and FBI’s active disinterest in collecting this data (until just recently), the “narrative” is no longer law enforcement’s to control. Comey at least admits the FBI — which was charged with collecting this data but somehow believed voluntary reporting would result in a comprehensive dataset — is partly to blame.

We do not know whether number of black, brown or white people being shot by police is up because we have not collected data.

The problem with Comey’s comments is that he apparently believes data on excessive force and killings by police officers will be ultimately exculpatory.

We need to show people what American law enforcement is really like, because if they see what we see, the chasm will close.

But the data collected by the public of its own initiative shows exactly what Comey claims it doesn’t: that law enforcement officers are killing black men at “epidemic rates.” Worse, Comey believes data collected and disseminated well after the fact will somehow be able to defuse immediate reactions to released video of officers killing or abusing citizens.

Videos of fatal police encounters that capture the public’s attention and are shared broadly across the internet can fuel the perception that “something terrible is being done by the police,” even if the data aren’t there to back it up.

Given the audience, Comey probably didn’t feel comfortable pitching the truth: that policing in America is every bit as bad as it’s portrayed to be. Comey thinks data will give law enforcement control over the narrative, but that seems to be his only concern. The culture of American policing needs to change before the data start matching law enforcement’s narrative.

Almost without fail, DOJ investigations of law enforcement agencies find two things: routine use of excessive force and biased policing. These aren’t anomalies or “bad apples.” This is how policing in America works.

As for the narrative, law enforcement still largely controls it. The corpse of the recently killed is barely on the way to the city morgue before law enforcement officials are dumping criminal records and officers’ “feared for their safety” claims into the hands of reporters. No amount of pointing to stats is going to change the fact that far too many interactions are needlessly escalated by responding officers, or that biased police tactics are generating far too many interactions in the first place.

While it’s good to know the FBI is finally going to push for better data collection on police use of force, the fact that it did nothing for nearly two decades counts against any goodwill it might hope to generate by finally doing its job. Unfortunately for those hoping this might lead to better policing, Jim Comey has made it clear it’s really about controlling the narrative and pushing the American public to view law enforcement the way Comey feels they should be viewed: as good people in tough jobs who rarely, if ever, screw up. We’ll just have to see what sort of spin is applied when Comey realizes the numbers aren’t going to add up to his preconceptions.

Filed Under: data, fbi, james comey, law enforcement, police shootings